Musgrove Family Blog Wandering the Parent Hood

First Grass Stains

We took Aidan out to run around in the fields near the house, he likes to run down hill until he falls over.

My first sunrise pictures

I convinced Gary, Jen and James to get up stupidly early on a Sunday and take pictures of the sunrise on the mall. My timing was a bit off, and I stopped to help Katherine get Aidan situated when he woke up while I was getting ready so we showed up in the middle of a beautiful sunrise. There were just enough clouds in the eastern sky to highlight the colors.

I still need to work on holding the camera perpendicular to the ground and holding the camera still on anything but the quickest shutter speeds. I swear that wearing glasses makes both of these things harder than they should be.

The pictures are here; these were shot with a Nikon D40 with 35mm F/1.8 lens direct to JPEG with auto-white balance. I used a mix of aperture priorty (most shots) and manual mode (those shots I wanted to under expose more than my more normal -.3).

CISSP

I finally got around to taking a CISSP prep course and exam earlier this summer, and FWIW I passed and my official certificate arrived today. I am now a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.

It is the ugliest piece of paper I have seen in quite awhile, I sure hope that the CISSP code of ethics doesn’t preclude me from criticizing someone’s decision to put a dark gold strip directly above an olive green stripe!

I will scan the certificate when I get home so you can bask in the ugliness of it!

Hiking Maryland Heights

This weekend James and I drove up to Harpers Ferry and Hiked Maryland Heights across the Potomac from the lower town of Harpers Ferry. It is a very challenging hike to make it up to the old Stone Fort, but the views are definitely worth it.

Afterwards we hung out at the house (having a place to shower and relax after hiking for four or five hours is a GOOD thing) and checked out the new DirectTV installation.

We couldn’t leave Jefferson County without stopping at the Charles Town Races for a bit. For the record, I lost twelve bucks on two horse races and broke even on the slots.

Richmond International Raceway

A bit late on this one, but Katherine and I went to the Nextel Cup NASCAR race in Richmond last month. It is actually a lot more fun in person than you would think given that people are only making left turns. Or in Richmond they only make one continuos turn for a couple of hours.

Having a hospitality tent before the race with free beer also helps the enjoyment of the event.

Pictures are here.

NASCAR races are louder than anything I have ever experienced including tractor pulls, demolition derbys, and Helmet concerts. I recorded a a bit of the race on my Vonage voicemail for your enjoyment.
NASCAR.wav

Chainsaw Fun

As many of you probably know, I am still slowly recovering from Hurricane Isabel. I have finally removed the remains of my shed, and I am making good progress on splitting the wood left over from the downed trees. This weekend I decided to do something about the large stump from one of the trees. It was too big to pull out, and would have taken a LOT of effort and digging, and using the chainsaw in the dirt to remove. So I did what any other red-blooded American would do… I made it into a chair, with an armrest, and a beer holder.

Of course to make this happen I had to do many things with my chainsaw that my user manual warned could result in grievous bodily harm and/or death. In other words don’t try this at home, or at least don’t try this in my yard where I may be found liable. For info on the correct way to use your chainsaw, here is a great guide.

Now if I can just get some sort of shed up in the yard I will be about done with this recovery process. Hopefully, just in time to get behind on my spring and summer yard work.

Finished Bathroom

For Valentine’s Day, I finished the second bathroom for Katherine. Took about another 25 hours of work to tape, paint, and clean it up to an acceptable standard. It only took us about a year to finish it, which means I should be finished the big projects inside and in the yard by 2025 or so.

Three Mile Island

I have been working in Camp Hill, PA for the last couple of weeks, and have been driving past Three Mile Island twice a day most of the time. I had always though that there had been a huge disaster at Three Mile Island and perhaps hundreds of people had died or gotten horribly ill. This article disputes those assumptions and quotes quite a bit of science to back up his assertions. It is an interesting read if you (like me) are to young to remember much of what went on in 1979.

Where do I Sign?

The Brown Daily Herald is carrying an open letter from Chris Song to baseball commissioner Bud Selig requesting a loser’s series between the Cubs and the Red Sox. I just want to know where I sign up to back this request.

Trees

I have been putting off getting a fireplace insert under the assumption that I wouldn’t get around to burning any wood this winter. I am starting to change my mind. Every hour I spend slowly cutting wood by hand, carrying wood around the yard, and staring at my flattened shed, the more I feel that I need to deal out some retribution! I need to burn this tree!

In other news, I am thinking of moving into the modern era and automate the cutting a bit with one of these, but I am not sure if it will be big enough, so maybe I should go with this model!

On the brighter side of things, I think three hours of sawing probably helped burn the calories from that Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake I had after lunch!